Harvest Grille offers a natural choice

The former Corner Café at 27 Main St. has been taken over by longtime town resident Sue Harragin and her business partner, chef Tim Shaw.

The two ran a restaurant in Florida for 15 years, and Harragin said they work well as a team – with Shaw as the culinary backbone.

“He is such an amazing chef,” Harragin said. “I like to cook, I like to bake, but Tim is a serious high performance chef.”

They have dubbed their new eatery the Harvest Grille and it will be opening by March 1 as a restaurant that will focus on locally grown and healthy offerings, including comfort food.

After signing the lease in November, Harragin and her crew got to work in December, sprucing up the property.

So far the renovations have included a lot of painting, but Harragin said they did lay new tile in the kitchen as well as outfit it with new appliances and a modern ventilation hood and fire suppression system.

“The layout is all the same as it was,” she said, “[but] the biggest challenge has been what to do about the dark pine paneling — solved by about 12 coats of paint.” The array of freshly laid yellow hues on the walls and paneling is inviting and warm, and town resident Michael DiVerdi has built a light wood countertop bar.

One of the incentives for Harragin to run the restaurant is that it is very close to her home — “a gentle commute,” she said — and will enable her to “integrate my children into my work a little better than I have been lately.”

Harragin said including locally grown foods is something she is very passionate about.

“Just like it is difficult for a household to follow the perfect line of a single ideology of food, like buying organic for example, the Harvest Grille will have to forever balance the challenging equation of supporting sustainable agriculture with bringing value to the customer,” she said.

Local farmers have been very receptive, and she said a few are even planting custom crops for the restaurant.

“Our focus isn’t really organic,” she said, “but is on preparing the freshest, best food while making choices that support local economy and support a healthy planet. Sometimes that means local-here-in-town, sometimes that means local-here-in-New-England, sometimes it means local-here-in-the-USA, sometimes that means certified organic, sometimes that means sustainably grown, sometimes it means conventionally grown. It is a balance.”

The idea of providing locally grown food is important to Harragin. Besides the restaurant, she also runs an organic apple orchard with her sister.

Harragin and Shaw are working to create a menu blending vegetarian and steak and seafood options as well as good old American comfort food, but Harragin wants their customers to help dictate how the menu evolves.

“I hope it’s a collaborative enterprise with customers,” she said. “We want a lot of feedback – what works for you, what doesn’t work for you.”

For more information, menus and contact information, visit theharvestgrille.com. The Harvest Grille can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.